The Cultural Phenomenon of the Unofficial Message Board.

Football fandom in its current form has a lot of differences from even 20 years ago. Terracing is a thing of the past in top flight grounds, the demographic that makes up the majority of attendances regularly includes men, women and children of all ages and the price of pint of beer appears to have increased an inexplicable amount. (Although that could just be my alcoholic tendencies rearing their ugly head for all to see.)

Perhaps the biggest change in recent years though, is the rise of the Internet forum for clubs supporters. These sites can have upwards of 100,000 members in some cases, and debate ranges from which formation the team should be playing to ridiculous conversations based on unsubstantiated rumours of a members Aunt Margaret having spoken to one of the players cleaners about where they may or may not be looking for a move to in the summer etc.

In my clubs case there are two separate message boards which dominate the supporters thoughts, the BBS and Holmesdale Online, both of which have thousands of members and encourage huge amount of debate and banter on a daily basis. I often watch from a far at the daily goings on, regularly getting frustrated at people with vastly differing views to me, but stopping short of actually going through with my anger and responding, instead forcing myself to think that it is just not worth the effort of getting involved in an online debate with someone over an opinion which they are almost definitely not going to change because of me.

There has also been another use for the aforementioned boards in recent months, with the new owners, CPFC2010, deciding to sign up with their own account and speak to the fans directly. Answering as many questions as they can within reason and giving a big chunk of our fan base the satisfaction of knowing that, deep down the people running their club are just like them. It is something which I am almost certain does not happen at any other club in the country and is a new development in the clubs structure which everyone connected with us can rightly feel extremely proud of.

There is however, an element of the message boards which causes far more problems than it solves. The issue I am speaking of relates to individuals starting "threads" which single out players for criticism. There is a grey area to this, it is every fans right to say what they think of certain players and no one should be able to stop that, but today Neil Danns, one of our most consistent central midfielders, took it upon himself via his Twitter account, to address a point which he clearly felt had gone too far.

Neil said, "As I am not a member on cbbs forum can someone reply on the thread that says I have a dodgy back that could make me fail a medical, and that palace shud of sold me cause of this, this is laughable, I have had a bad back for the last month, that is correct but before this.

If you look at my injury record the only major injury I have has been my groin wich I have had no problem with for 2 years and is completely fine now, I see people talk about me as if what they’re saying is true, so ill clear it up, I have never had chronic back problems, I wouldn’t have be able to make 49 starts last season if I did, and 24 this season, due to a knee injury from a challenge, it would b more.

Almost every player gets a couple of injuries a season, especially if your playing most, also I'm not trying to get closer to the north for family reasons my head has not been turned by any speculation, I have simply been playing through a bit of pain to do my part, so to all the people that claim they know the reasons why I'm not supposedly giving my all, or not signing a contract, can you stop lying, to all others your support is brilliant, and I am 100 percent appreciative of it, I just don't want people making up lies, so hopefully I've cleared this up, eaggleess.

Oh ya and this isn't a rant lol, I'm in good spirits and just want to clear it up for the real palace fans, so someone tell the user eddies dad on the cbbs forum, to stop lying, opinions are cool but lying is not."

Without losing his temper or verbally abusing the person in question, Neil clearly demonstrated to anyone who read his comments that what the poster in question had said about him was just not true.

The issue I hold with the person who made these comments about Neil and all the others like him is that, with the internet being so widely accessible now, and club message boards being so widely read, the points made can reach far further than he originally intended them to go.

I am not saying that one person’s views or comments on Neil will have an impact on him not signing a new contract with the club, but one thing is for sure, they definitely won’t have helped matters. It means the vast majority of our supporters (myself included) begin scrambling to try and repair the potential damage to the player’s view of our fans and left with a feeling of worry as to whether we have all been tarred by the same brush.

I would just like to state that I believe, Neil Danns has consistently been one of our top two or three performers throughout the last two seasons, always giving his all for the cause, never pulling out of a challenge and evidently playing through the pain barrier in recent weeks for the greater good of the team. To lose him in the summer would be a monumental blow to the club in my opinion and I hope and believe that CPFC2010 are doing everything within their power to ensure that he does sign a new contract.

If he chooses not to, we will never know as fans if these random outbursts from supposed Palace fans had anything to do with his decision, all I can say is that I and thousands of fellow fans like me, are desperate for him to ignore the few idiots and sign a contract extension with a club where he is loved.

Everybody Danns now.....